Here’s my linktree which is kept more or less up to date.
You can click on the link above or use the QR Code.
Linktree
Time for an upgrade!
So it’s been FIVE years since I last updated this website.
A lot had changed, so I’m going to start to refocus the content on what I’m doing now and in the future, rather than what I’ve done in the past.
Starting with my new logo!
Welcome to FunkyJ.com
So, here it is, the new and improved FunkyJ.com for 2016.
When I started writing for dB Magazine and inthemix in 2002, the web was nascent and you had to look hard for material on the various artists I interviewed. Nowadays with wikipedia and google it’s really simple to find information, and I hope this writing will be added to that pile, and be useful to others.
It’s a little laborious copying and reformatting all my old interviews, so it will take a while to get all my content online again.
However I feel my writing is still valuable, not only for myself as both dB Magazine and inthemix have changed radically over the last 14 years and some of my stuff has vanished, but I also hope it’s useful for anyone who may interview these people in the future.
Oh, and just a note about the articles – the wordpress publishing dates I wrote them – or at least the creation dates the computer recorded me writing them. Publishing dates would have usually been a week or so after the creation dates. There may be some errors with this and the articles in general, but I present them as I wrote them, not as they were edited.
Katalyst
Ashley Anderson, better known as Katalyst, has many fans both in Australia and around the world. Co-Label and one of the men behind Portishead Geoff Barrow is a big fan, and DJ Z-Trip recently showed his love for Anderson by playing his debut album around Europe and the USA. “We actually hung out on the Good Vibrations Tour,” Anderson says proudly, “and I found out he’s a fan of my first album.”
The reason I mention Z-Trip is Katalyst’s second album, What’s Happening is very similar to Z-Trip’s debut Shifting Gears in that not only are some well known MCs used to great effect, but rock artists are also thrown into the mix to produce striking aural delight. Furthermore both shirk the “hiphop” genre without losing their individual identity. “I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a producer of party and hiphop tracks,” Anderson explains. “I wanted to show case different styles I’m into and that I can get my head around but still give it a unified sound across the record. It was something I set out to do and it influenced the guests I decided to get on the record.”
The album is also very political, which has become a passion for Anderson recently. Whilst never directly attacking any one political ideology directly, the songs speak of the state of the world today, with some of it quite biting. “I think it’s an important thing that people are thinking about what’s going on in the world. Without wanting to preach to people and turn them off of the music I thought it would be nice to include some political subtleties on there and give the album a theme that would help the artists focus onto.”
The soulfulness of What’s Happening is refreshingly surprising, especially from a hiphop artist, and I wondered if this was a response to all the crap hiphop that’s coming out, especially from the USA. “I think it may be a response to the crap hiphop,” Anderson laughs, “but I think it’s just a reaction to all the crap music out there as well. A lot of the electro people seem to be into these days has very little soul. For me the thing that defines good or bad music, or music that I’m into or not, is whether it has a certain degree of soul in it, so there’s an underlying soul to the stuff I do or the stuff I’m attracted to.”
What’s Happening features MCs Hau, Ru C.L and Nfa from Australia, Yungun from the UK, and J Live and Diverse from the USA. But Anderson doesn’t confine himself to hiphop, utilising soul singers such as Steve Spacek and Stephanie McKay, as well as folk and rock performers such as Katie Noonan from George and Adalita from Magic Dirt. And this wide assortment of players will be accompanying him on his national tour.
“It’s going to be a big show and I’m excited about doing a live set rather than the traditional DJ based format I’ve played before, so I’m really looking forward to,” he says sincerely. “I’ve already worked with a lot of the guests on various things and we’ve got the band together – Leeroy Brown on turntables and one of the finest kepboard players in the country Stu Hunter (who’s played with Portishead, silverchair, the John Butler Trio amongst others) on keys and bass, and I’m rocking drum machine / sampler. Steve Spacek is based here at the moment and we’ve been jamming together, Ru C.L. and Hau are able to be here for rehearsal and Steph (McKay) is coming out a few weeks before for recording, so we’ll get some serious sessions in between there. Having done stuff off her first album and forthcoming one we’ll probably do stuff off there. And J Live is such a seasoned MC, he doesn’t need to practice!” Anderson laughs.
This will be accompanied by an audio visual show that was created by Anderson in conjunction with some friends. “I’ve played some smaller shows and had a really good reaction to them,” he says. Whilst the visuals aren’t exactly interactive in the way that Coldcut are, they have been designed to flow with the music, and will add an extra dimension to what is already sounding like a great experience.
Katalyst plays with his band and guests on Thurs 22 Nov at The Governor Hindmarsh, and his second album What’s Happening is out through Inertia now.
Kid Confucius
Having eight people in a band, you’d tend to expect a lot of conflict between members. Especially when not in the studio recording, those members are out on the road touring constantly. But Bart Denaro of Kid Confucius enjoys the time he spends with his band mates. “It’s almost like a school camp with us,” he laughs, “because there’re at least 10 people in the entourage and it’s just a lot of fun. Even if you do have a problem or a problem comes up you can distance yourself from it because there’s so many people [to interact with].”
Kid Confucius are promoting their sophomore album ‘Stripes’, a soulful exploration of funk and hiphop, inspired by the likes of Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder, with a little bit of rock thrown in. “Personally as a drummer,” says Denaro, “I would say my biggest influence would have to be John Bonham (of Led Zeppelin fame), but then it moves to the old soul session players like Bernard Perdie and Al Jackson, and those kinds of bands. Our influences have changed though and me and a lot of the band have a strong rock influence”.
“When we got together the first song we jammed on was Suck My Kiss by the Chilli Peppers,” Denaro explains the rock link further. “And that kind of party funk thing we were doing in the beginning, that is appealing to anyone on the level that you go out to a club and don’t really know the song, but still dance to it. And for a young band that’s really appealing. You don’t need people to know you, you don’t need to be on the radio to be able to do a good gig, the people just get into it because it’s got that groove to it,” he smiles. “Then we started looking a bit deeper into the music we were listening to. We started looking at those who inspired the funk, like Stevie and that, and started focusing on those elements for this album.”
Not only have the influences evolved, but also the whole song writing process. “In the beginning Andrew (Guirguis aka Pre Fab, the band’s MC) penned pretty much most of the songs on the first album. Since the first album I’ve had a lot more to do with the production side of things because I spent a lot of time working with our producer Buckman (Tony Buchen). Also Rob (Hezkial, the bands main singer) became more involved with the writing process. The songs start from one person’s idea, say a verse idea or chorus, and grow from there. We did about 4 months of pre-production in which we brought those ideas to the table and worked through them as a band. So ‘Stripes’ was a much more collaborative thing than we’ve ever done before.”
Their tour,called ‘The Street Corner Soul Tour’, celebrates Soul music in a similar way to Aretha Franklin’s Fillmore West concerts of 1969 by playing at traditional rock venues around the country. “The Fillmore West was traditionally a rock Mecca in San Francisco and the very gesture of Aretha Franklin playing there was a real statement for soul music. She sold out two nights there which was a real landmark for soul at that time. This idea really struck true for us because we live in such a rock centric country, and we wanted to do something in the same vein – play rock venues and pubs and brazenly play soul music.”
“We kicked the tour off with two nights at the Annadale in Sydney, it’s THE pub-rock venue in Sydney,” Denaro explains, “and we’ve had a couple of gigs there before and haven’t had the greatest time because of therock status. But going in there with this premise, with the word Soul in the tour name, we had two of the best shows we’ve ever played there!” he grins.
They also hit the street corners in the literal sense. “We get as much of the band out there on the street and do an impromptu performance, and the response has been awesome! So far we’ve done a performance in Sydney in Newtown, Brisbane in the Valley, and on Brunswick St in Melbourne. We’ve bought a little battery powered speaker we can plug a couple of guitars and the vox mic into, and we drive around the city, look for a nice spot and then do it as quickly as we can before we get any police attention!” he laughs.
He’s pretty confident it will happen in Adelaide, so don’t be surprised if you see a Tarago pull up to somewhere around the city, and eight musicians pile out and start playing sweet soul music. But if you don’t manage to catch them this way, they’re playing Fri 12 Oct at the Governor Hindmarsh.
The Scratch Perverts – Tony Vegas
Commencing life as an eight person monster hiphop crew, set up to challenge the dominance of the Americans in the DMCs, then whittled down to just three amazing performers, The Scratch Perverts now epitomise all that is good about dance music. They’ve grown and matured from the hiphop scene, playing a diverse and clever range of music that encourages people to listen to stuff they wouldn’t normally listen to, and which prohibits the group from being pigeonholed into any other category than “simply superb”.
Tony Vegas, the man who originally kicked off the Scratch Perverts isn’t afraid to speak his mind. When I mention the fact that some people choose to criticise them for playing stuff other than hiphop in the begining, he shoots off into a massive, well though out rant that has us both chuckling throughout. “People always want you to be the person they want you to be,” he begins philosophically. “It’s a fact of being a performer to a certain extent. If the Red Hot Chilli Peppers played in Australia tomorrow night and just performed stuff off their yet to be released new album, people would be like “what the fuck! I wanted you to do Under the Bridge” and so on. People want you to be who they want you to be, and personally I have no interest in that. You’re there to show them who you are and who you know yourself to be.”
“People can interpret how you perform however they choose to, but if any of those who’ve criticised us for playing stuff other than hiphop can tell us that the hiphop scene is so good that we shouldn’t play stuff other than hiphop, I’ll gladly listen to them. But as far as I’m concerned the whole hiphop scene is on its arse, and has been for ages; it’s shit!” he chuckles. “Yeah ok Kanye West’s new album is going to come out and it’s going to be good, yeah definitely no doubt,” he concedes “but where is everything else? There’s just not good stuff coming out anymore and it’s not 1989 anymore.”
“We play music that affects us emotionally and we like as a crew,” he states. “Hiphop was never about one particular ‘thing’, it was always about interpretation of music, and that’s what I still consider it to be. I’ve been into hiphop since the early 80s and I’m old in that game and I’m pretty sure in my opinion of what hiphop is meant to be. It’s not about a guy with a microphone rapping over a fucking Scott Storch beat; it was never meant to be that and was meant to be more than that. If people’s interpretation of it is simply that then they’re welcome to it, but I don’t think it’s really fair for people to, in a bitchy way, challenge other people’s interpretation of music. I think it’s just a bit weak to be honest.”
With that out of the way, we discuss the fortunes of the group. “The DJing thing for us seems to get bigger all the time. It’s really good to be busy, especially at home as we’re doing two to three shows a week, though we try to not do more than that,” Vegas says. “We’ve been in the studio a little, and are working out a clothing range with Maharishi to represent the brand we see our name being. But we’re mostly focused in the studio. We hibernate and look at our monitors for 12 hours a day and gradually go mad,” he chuckles.
The Scratch Perverts are known for combining hiphop and drum and bass, so I asked Vegas if they had anything special planned for Australia in the way of tricks. “If people think us playing drum and bass is a headfuck then they should wait to see us play in Australia,” he says mysteriously. After a bit of prodding, he explains a little of what we can expect. “We’re going to work out a few trick things to include,” he mentions casually. “We play a little dubstep now, so we start with that and move into hiphop. We’re influenced by the French scene at the moment, Diplo, Justice, Switch and those kinds of guys, and we think the stuff in the middle will really surprise a lot of people. I don’t think anyone making music at the moment can ignore Justice and the quality of their production. You can’t but help to be influenced by that and if people want to ignore it they’re being childish,” he rants again. But to all those who love dnb, don’t fret. “We end up with drum and bass and so you’ll hear 180bpms a minute, and end up bleeding,” he laughs.
Scratch Perverts play Parklife alongside Adam Freeland, Justice, Digitalism, Stereo MCs and more, held at the Botanic Gardens on Sun 23 Sept.
Digitalism
Born in Hamburg, Germany, signed to French label Kistune, and distributed throughout the world by Virgin and EMI, Digitalism seem to have the world at their feet. Like the mighty Daft Punk before them, from who they draw influence and are often compared to, their strongly European irrelevant sense of fun gushes from their electronic instruments onto the vinyl of DJs and then to the dance floors of the world.
Jens Moelle and Ismail Tuefekci met in a record store when Moelle was behind the counter and Tuefekci an eager punter. “I had known the record store owner for a number of years and was really good friends with him,” Tuefekci says is a smooth German accent. “It was a really cool atmosphere in there. When Jens had exams I worked there in his place, and when he came back I found out Jens produced at home and I produced at home.”
“The owner had a party, and because Jens and I come from the same generation he billed us to play together. And that night was so funny because Jens knew what I would play and I knew what he would play and that. When we DJ we need some exciting stuff,” Tuefekci explains. “I’m not looking for particular labels or artists. I’m interested in music, not who’s producing this song or which label that. We like to throw different types of music in a mix, not just keep it one way for a whole night. We might throw in some punk, rock, electro, dance or whatever.”
In 2002 Digitalism formed their studio. “We and another friend had a stupid idea to start a studio,” laughs Tuefekci. “We were bored of all the records, you know working in a record store so long we were just searching for something new.” That studio was set up in a bunker in Hamburg, Germany, which helped to create an unique atmosphere to record songs that have an irrelevant feel. “We play a strobe light when we are producing, we don’t have windows, and after three or four hours there’s no fresh air. We can’t take it seriously,” he chuckles again.
Hamburg, being a small German town, has a big influence on Digitalism. Tuefekci explains that Hamburg doesn’t have a big dance scene, but it’s the home of German hiphop, but unlike in other places the hiphop is influenced by electronica and vice versa. “We’re not in a French scene or London scene or Berlin scene. We know the people there in those and are talking to them a lot, are friends with them, but we aren’t in a scene. And we don’t want to focus on one scene, we want to take all of that and mix it together. It’s really cool because we have friends in those scenes, but we are very isolated, not in a bad way but in an interesting way.”
After wooing crowds DJing and doing a few bootlegs including The White Stripes’ 7 Nation Army and the Cure’s Fire in Cairo, their catchy electro-pop caught the ears of French label Kitsune, “After Zdarlight,” one of their first popular singles, “they sent a girl from the label to talk to us and they were really excited and were looking for more and more.” That led to their debut album ‘Idealism’, a fresh take on the booming electro scene spearheaded by Justice and Australia’s Presets. “We were helped out by Kim from the Presets on Pogo,” Tuefekci mentions. “We have a prodigious output and the label helped a lot with choosing songs and graphics. It’s not like they are a major label, we feel like it’s an independent and it’s a really cool feeling for us as artists.”
Digitalism are keen to hit Australia for Parklife, which is hitting Adelaide for the first time this year. When asked about their set up for the gig, Tuefekci explains that they like to keep it simple. “Our sound is between a band and electronic artist, you know? Jens and I are a duo and it’s important for us to stay together without four or five in the whole band thing when on the road. When on stage Jens is singing and I am on E-Drums and then we play on our electronic gear – synthesisers and sound controller and samplers,” he says, but stresses that even so they contain a lot of energy and like to have a lot of fun.
Digitalism play Parklife alongside Adam Freeland, Justice, Scratch Perverts, Stereo MCs and more, held at the Botanic Gardens on Sun 23 Sept.
Jamie Messenger
When your knowledge of classical music comes from Disney and Warner Brother Cartoons, it’s hard to conceive questions for one of Adelaide’s foremost classical composers. However, Jamie Messenger doesn’t fit the mould usually conjured up by the words “classical composer.” He plays keyboards, guitars and sings in bands, has produced and arranged numerous pieces for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (ASO), including shows ‘All You Need Is Beatles’, ‘Zeppelin Flies Again’ and ‘Orchestral Pink Floyd’, and of course is the composer behind the incredibly successful ‘Hard Road Restrung’ album with the Hilltop Hoods.
He even laughed heartily at my suggestion the Simpsons may have been an inspiration for the merging of hiphop and orchestration, giggling at the idea it was thought up whilst someone was stoned. So, what did inspire him to merge the Hilltop Hoods and the ASO? “Essentially it’s just a good idea,” he smiles. “I heard a lot of the Hilltop Hoods music before and I thought it had a chance of working – I didn’t know for sure to be honest,” he chuckles, “but I thought it was worth a try. When we did some work with the string quartet to start with (for the ARIAs) from that I got an indication of what they’re like and what they’d be happy with, which gave me a good grounding to do the orchestral score.”
“There’s certainly a lot of scope in rock, and even more so in hiphop, to add orchestral elements,” he explains. “With hiphop there’s not as much melody to clash, you don’t have to switch to a melody, and that, so you’ve got the whole gamut of melody and new harmony you can add to the music. Certainly with a lot of rock music there’s not a lot you can do with it and you have to chug along with the chords, but there is some rock music that gets more intricate. Hiphop music is based on samples repeated through the piece so you’ve got the option of writing one section and looping it or you can take the option I did and expand the piece right to the end and write the dynamics into it,” he continues. “Rather than take the sample and say ‘we’ll turn it up here’, I’ve used those techniques and put it into the actual orchestration, so instead of using a filter or effect, I get that sound just through the way I orchestrate it.”
I was surprised when Messenger told me the Hilltops were quite hands off. “The songs they really liked were those I had changed a lot and added some new melodies and things like that, so from my point of view it was great!” he grins. “The Hilltops didn’t really have much input or knowledge of what I was going to be doing but they weren’t checking up and saying we want this or that; they had enough faith in me and trusted me enough,” he laughs. “I was always a bit hesitant at how well it would work,” he confesses. “I was uncertain to how diehard hiphop fans would take to having an orchestra with the band but I’m really glad people enjoy it and get into it.”
And boy, did people enjoy it! ‘The Hard Road Restrung’ debuted at no 8 on the ARIA record charts, and the sellout concert at Adelaide Entertainment Centre saw 7,200 fans smashing attendance records for a local act. I asked Messenger if he had talked to any of the orchestra since and what they thought of it. “They were certainly blown away by the magnitude of the crowd and how they knew all the lyrics and singing along at the right time. The crowd certainly doesn’t act like that at a normal gig the ASO will play. The audience don’t jump up and sing along with the operas,” he laughs. “I think they can see how much people appreciate what they did, and who doesn’t want 7,200 people screaming and cheering for you,” he chuckles again.
If there was one criticism I could have levelled at the show it was the fact the orchestra were tucked behind the band and weren’t brought to the forefront of the show. Messenger assures me this was for the best. “We never had done anything to this scale before and the logistics of the concert meant it’s better to keep them back there. They have to be able to see the conductor the whole time, and the sound on the stage made it very hard to hear what was going on. Timing-wise it just makes it easier if they’re all together in one place.”
Messenger just finished doing the ‘ASO Plays Queen’ shows in Adelaide, and is taking it to other states, “although Freddy couldn’t make it unfortunately” he laughs. He says after this he will take some time off to concentrate on writing music for his band the Scholars, and it will be very interesting to hear what this talented musical maestro will come up with next.
The Hard Road Restrung is out now through Obese Records.
Benga
Now, I don’t make these types of calls often as I hate coming across as a wanky music journalist, but it’s not very often these days you witness the birth of a movement of fresh sounding music. Sure, there are sub-genres of the popular standards that do very well and can sometimes evolve their own scene, as witnessed with “emo”. And there is music that simply sounds like older music, like “nu-gaze” which imitates and expands the genre a little but keeps so much essence of the original to be unoriginal in and of itself.
But it’s my opinion that Dubstep is a new form of music, different enough from its roots to be its own genre, and fresh enough from all the other music out there to not be a subgenre of something else. Although it has been around for a number of years, Dubsteps roots lie in UK dance genres Garage and Drum & Bass, but the music expands from its influences so much that it finds a wider and different audience, and is becoming more popular outside its UK homeland, expanding its reach into Europe, America and Australia.
One of its leading lights is Beni Uthman, better known as DJ Benga, a South London DJ who along with DJ Skream is at the forefront of the Dubstep movement. Uthman started off mixing Garage from an early age, but also listened to a lot of Drum & Bass. “I never really had a preference – I liked everything. When I started mixing it wasn’t because I liked garage more,” he explains, “it was because I had more garage around me at the time. All my brothers were MCs, and would MC to garage, and that’s how I got into it.”
He also got a lot of help from the guys at Big Apple Records in Croydon, South London, his home town. “Whenever I went in there when I was younger they were like “can you DJ, can you really DJ?” and I could. I remember one time it was quite late and it was shutting hours, so I said to them let me have a mix. So they let me have a mix and they were shocked because I was only 12 or 13! I could barely reach the top of the counter,” Uthman laughs. “They came out and saw me DJ out as well and were so impressed they gave me sponsorship and that,” he smiles.
Knowing the sounds he liked, they helped Uthman find tunes with the subbass and broken beats he liked. This was found mostly on B-Sides of garage and grime tunes, but wasn’t exactly to his liking. He had a passion for the darker sounds of drum and bass, but loved the dance beat of garage, and couldn’t find exactly the sound he wanted to play on other people’s records so with DJ Skream he started producing his own material, releasing tunes on the ‘Big Apple Records’ label. “My sound, I would say,” he muses, “come from drum and bass style synths, drum and bass style baselines, with a garage tempo drums. Because of my UK garage influences I have the rolling drums, but I still have that half-time beat… with a little bit of techno in there as well,” he chuckles.
Radio has been very important in promoting dubstep to a wider audience. BBC Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs championed the sound on her show ‘Dubstep Warz’ in 2006, and Skream’s own show ‘Stella Sessions’ on the infamous pirate radio station Rinse FM also fills the airwaves with the subbase synonymous with dubstep. But it also reaches a global audience via the internet. “When people couldn’t lock into a show, barefiles would host it so they could download it at any time,” Uthman says, talking about www.barefiles.com, the probably-not-legal website which hosts radio shows from around the UK. “Because of this, I’d go to Amsterdam, and be shocked because the people would know the songs I was playing. I expected to have to warm them into it, but they already knew what was big and that sort of thing.”
It’s Uthmans first time to Australia, and he’s looking forward to coming. Being the first dubstep international to play Adelaide, he’s especially keen to pop our dubstep cherry. “I remember Skream (who’s played in Australia but not Adelaide) telling me the people are really friendly and the scene will get bigger and better because the people really love bassline. Bassline’s an international language,” he laughs, “Everyone loves bassline, innit?”
Benga plays at Rhino Room on Sat 8 Sep alongside DJs Jayar, Stagga4wrd, Bennie Raw, Macro & Audioopticon
Vents
Vents is the latest signing to Obsese records, the home of Aussie hiphop and label for Pegz, Bias B, Funkoars and of course, The Hilltop Hoods. His musical style is pretty unique in Aussie hiphop, being brash, aggressive, and more in your face than most of the other Aussie hiphop which tends to be a little more laid back. And this is a deliberate move by Vents.
“I’m not really ‘starting out’”, when I ask him about his first album ‘Hard To Kill’, “because I’ve been rhyming for close to ten years maybe, and it was only when I started taking it seriously that an album actually got done. Theoretically I should have had an album out by now with the amount I’ve written over the years,” he chuckles.
“I used to do the same old shit, but then I started getting more lyrical and creative and thought I could go somewhere with that. I think I started writing better rhymes when I put my self in the state of mind that I wanted to be the best at the type of thing I was doing. Not necessarily the best at battle rap or whatever, but carve a niche for myself, and make sure nobody can beat that, not yet anyway,” he grins. “I don’t try and follow a formula which most new guys seem to do, and to me good music transcends genres so I try to appeal to outside the hiphop realm without selling out, if you know what I mean.”
Our talk shifts to other hiphop in Adelaide – mainly the Hilltop Hoods, whose influence has spread far and wide, and the Funkoars, who seem to be on the threshold of crossing over. Both groups have had input into ‘Hard to Kill’, with Suffa rapping on one track, Sesta and Trials on a couple more, with Trials producing the album. “I might throw Trials some beats and samples and see if he can do anything with them, and I give them to him and watch him destroy them,” Vents laughs. “But usually he has a heap of beats and asks me if I can use them and I’ll write something and go and record it, and when he gets it back he does his magic with it, makes it sound real good.”
I find it interesting that Adelaide has such a diverse range of really good rappers, and Vents agrees. “It’s weird. You’d expect, because they’ve got such big populations, bigger populations of better MCs in from Sydney or Melbourne, I guess,” He ponders. “I remember someone asked the Hoods a similar question back in the day and I think they said it was the water supply,” he chuckles. “But I think it’s the vanguard – The Hoods, Certified Wise, Funkoars, they never sold out. A lot of people take shots at the Hoods because they’ve blown up, but they’re super lyrical and I expect that’s had a big impact on the rest of us”.
I wondered if it was a class thing – all these crews grew up in poorer areas around Adelaide’s south. “I think hiphop is definitely a working class type of music, but it’s the same with anything. You look at any great group like Black Sabbath, they’re working class. Maybe it’s a desire to get out of that routine. I dunno though, I’m working class and I’ve never been hard up, never gone hungry before, you know”.
Vents album tackles subjects such as media manipulation, corrupt police and politicians and war. It’s pretty ferocious, and it’s clear how Vents got his name. “I make it a point to be anti-war; I’m not just against Iraq. Because it’s always poor walking class people going to fight for rich people and maintain their world. And I’m anti-State to be honest with you – they just rob the working class – those who make everything… There’s some commie propaganda for you, put that down” he laughs.
Vents is about to embark on an album launch tour, and is looking forward to getting on the road again after the successful Block Party Tour. “I was trying to take it easy, pretty much,” he says of his first time on the road. “In Tasmania on the first weekend we got fucked up, I can’t remember anything! I remember wandering around the city and rocking up to the hotel at 5:30 the next morning,” he laughs, “But after that I got serious.”
You can see Vents get serious at the official launch party for Hard To Kill on Fri 24Aug at HQ with the Funkoars.